Winter Damage

by Natasha Carthew

  The moor and all it had got was out there waiting for her in the dark, a cold rock thing, hard as nails. She got up and went to the airing cupboard in the hall. There was one last thing she needed to bring with her, a ‘just in case’ thing that she hoped never to use, but with all things upended in the country, something she just couldn’t leave without: the shotgun.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ennor shifted the heavy rucksack on to her back and shrugged it into place between her shoulder blades. The weight of her world was packed tight into pockets and swung jangling from baler twine and the rifle sat jabbed through the straps of the bag like a yoke.

  She walked with purpose despite the uneven weight and didn’t dare look back at the trailer once.

  Before she left she’d sat Trip down to explain things over and she was honest with him like always. She told him it would only be for a few days and she and Mum would be home for Christmas and when he’d cried she told him he was made of strong Carne stuff and she kissed him and called him ‘buddy’ one last time.

  The snow had stopped falling and despite dense cloud the morning was awake with a sudden clarity that lifted Ennor’s spirit to bursting and she made a good pace through the fields towards the track that led to the moor.

  She had plans written by Butch and plans written in her mind’s eye but a girl used to life’s underhand knew plans for travel and actual journey were two very different things.

  The one link that would lead her to her mother lived less than five or so miles west and Ennor hoped to reach the cottage before nightfall.

  She passed through the kissing gate that marked the end of the farm boundary and hiked up the gradual incline north-west. When she reached the top of the hill she stood in the thick snow-laden ground to settle the urge that grew in the well of her stomach – the urge to look back at the farm one last time before the landscape swallowed it up.

  Her father would be calling from his bed around about now, his weak voice breaking to finish her name. Perhaps he’d be wondering the why and the where, perhaps he knew something was up, perhaps he did not. Ennor wanted to turn and say goodbye to something, something she was losing, something she had already lost, but she held off the melancholic fog and reached into her shirt pocket for her tobacco tin, rolled herself a cigarette and moved on.

  Ennor Carne told herself there was no room for crying in this new world: it would be the one guarantee she could put in the box stored at the back of her mind labelled ‘sure things’. It was a small box, there wasn’t much she was sure of to put in it, but the not crying thing and the getting on with things were packed in tight.

  When the track she followed leant full-tilt west she looked out at the whitewashed landscape and a bump of excitement bubbled and burst from her insides and pulled at the corners of her mouth with a smile.

  The following few days would be hers and hers alone. No chores and no demands to bog her down; these would be her freedom days. She dug her heels into the frozen ground and kept an eye on markers and monuments to stop herself from straying. The standing stones and tin mines she knew so well had become unfamiliar pointers in the snow. The stones wore thick broad hats as high as boxes and skirts that drifted into her path. Ennor felt as if she were being lifted gracefully towards her destination.

  Her great-aunt’s cottage sat stitched into a tangle of gorse and bracken, as far as she could recall. She and Dad had visited it once when her mother first went missing, but the scramble of texture and colours had stayed with Ennor, and she was sure once she found the cottage she would be on route to finding her mother.

  All around her the moor rose higher and the land below melted and broke away like icebergs. She imagined herself setting sail towards unknown territory and fancied herself something other than a dumb kid. She thought about the country crumbling slowly to ruin and wondered if it was as bad as the news made out. There was a part of her that wanted to see a little of the crazy stuff, find something to prove that she wasn’t the only person poor and searching.

  She stopped occasionally to study the way the land played out and she painted everything in summer colours to match that in her mind’s eye and she counted out the skeletal trees half fallen like matchsticks all higgledy from a box and counted them back in with a nod.

  An even number meant God was with her and she continued on her way.

  Ennor liked to talk to herself and she raced through the list of things she needed to ask her great-aunt and numbered them one to five. These were her main questions. There would be other questions, but they would be labelled ‘spontaneous’ and couldn’t be numbered.

  When the opportunity arose she introduced herself to a hawthorn tree with her hand outstretched and she shook the branch with a firm practised grip.

  ‘You might not remember me.’ She smiled. ‘But I am your great-niece, Ennor Carne.’

  The branch shook her hand and the tree swayed indifference and Ennor moved on.

  Question number one was, ‘Do you remember me?’ Question two a plain, ‘How are you?’ Three was, ‘Do you know where my mother is?’ And numbers four and five were, ‘Could you tell me?’ and ‘Can I stay the night?’

  She asked the questions in her head and she said them out loud to feel the words like sweets in her mouth and she moved the sequence and the words about with her tongue, adding new ones for the flavour, before changing everything back.

  There was also a set of questions saved for when she met her mother and she kept these quiet and separate from the others so as not to get them all scrambled. She settled her mind squarely on the thought of her missing parent. She recalled the last time she’d seen her she was seven years old, seven years back. Lucky numbers, but not for Ennor. Her mother had been standing with the baby in her arms and crying like often and always, except this time there was something different about her, a streak of defiance and decision that danced in her tawny eyes, replacing resignation.

  She must have planned and schemed all summer long before she ran away, pulling the baby from her breast and leaving the only other love apart from God’s behind.

  Ennor remembered the Christmas Mum was pregnant. Sitting bundled by the fire toasting chestnuts they had foraged in autumn. The Christmas before the baby came, when they were a family of three, a happy trinity.

  Despite abandonment Ennor did not resent her. She knew she might seem naive to others but she didn’t hate her because her mother had been sick in the head and sick in the soul. She had told Ennor on leaving that only God could save her and one day Ennor would understand. Each day she looked into her beautiful brother’s eyes she did not. Every time she made a meal from scraps and emptied the slop she did not. With her dad sick and dying and her brother a kid, and perhaps herself too, she did not understand. But still she didn’t resent her, didn’t pity either.

  She traced the skyline with her finger and the ribbons of cloud knotted and tied together, hanging like heavy bows close to clipping the countryside and they were like nothing Ennor had ever seen. She wondered if she’d seen the last of the snow storms because the clouds looked menacing and she stamped her boots all ways for the patterns in the snow and tiptoed and went wide and looked back at the yellowing swirls like hoof marks.

  The route Butch had numbered one she knew like the back of her hand because he had worked it and fiddled it a hundred times last night, but there was another route that stuck in her mind, a rough sketch of maybes, and this was route number two.

  Route number one took terrain and variants into consideration and route number two did not. Number one was part track and leant into the moor as if driven by a guiding hand all the way to safety. Number two was a straight line and had no regard for safety but was direct and fast.

  Ennor knew, given the time, that one meant getting there sometime tomorrow. Two meant getting there tonight and, despite all the reasoning Butch had given her to stick to his plan and all the promising and everything, the path less travelled meant warmth and a hot meal. It also meant tal
king about Mum and planning out and doing the list numbering for the next stage of her journey.

  A seagull called out to her on the passing wind and she scanned the skewed sky until she spied it and counted it, one, and when it joined its flock she counted the rest in a panic and got only halfway before they dropped from the horizon. A bad sign she chose to ignore and she continued to follow route number two.

  Seagulls meant many things to the Cornish. Inland they meant either rain or ploughing and in winter just rain, but in the cold like today seagulls just meant seagulls passing through. Perhaps they were journeying coast to coast, south to north like Ennor. They were the lucky ones: an hour on the wing and they’d arrive, fishing for lunch and whatever else seagulls did.

  Every now and then she stopped to adjust the rucksack and each time a little voice told her it was time to eat. Her stomach fisted into a rubber-band ball and her mouth rinsed with the thought of food but this was not the time for weakness. If she was to have any luck on her journey, she’d have to make sacrifices along the way, pretend this was hard even when it tickled her into thinking it was fun.

  Simply put, luck was long overdue; it owed her big time. Ennor believed in it and indulged it and gave it life, helping it to exist by holding tight and loading faith into it like a reusable carrier bag. There would be no hitches or snags on her journey, the snow would not return and she would complete her mission in time for Christmas. If luck was paying up, she’d have it bagged in a heartbeat.

  She wished there was a way Butch could have come with her. He wasn’t the type for sport and doing, but it would have been fun for the company, a bit of chat to pass the time.

  Ennor stopped to survey a granite outcrop of rock that had bubbled into view and she wondered whether to climb it or go around. She imagined Butch whispering for her to take the long way and she smiled and clambered to the top and cleared a circle of the snow to sit.

  He had made her a stack of potato cakes and a flask of milky coffee as preparation for her trip into the wilderness and she ate a little and drank some coffee and thanked him and she meant it. She looked up at the sky. The brightness of morning had been rubbed and washed with hues of grey and orange and a slight breeze was picking its way from the north-eastern slopes of the moor.

  The rest was welcome, but idle sitting felt awkward to Ennor, her mind raced everyplace wrong.

  Bad thoughts rattled her and fear stalked the tor where she sat. Leaden fear with doubt whistling senseless through its teeth.

  She sipped her coffee and thought about home. If she went at it fast, she’d get back in time for the goodnight and have everyone forgetting she’d ever been gone. Turn the radio on and off and make a proper cup of tea, climb into her bed, bundle up and dream.

  Ennor knew in two, maybe three hours the snow would return and she finished off her coffee, cleaned the mug with snow and packed the flask and plastic box of potato cakes back into the rucksack.

  She stood up and brushed herself down and swung the pack on to her shoulders, careful of her footing as she climbed down.

  With the snow tagging and threatening behind her, she moved on and picked up speed as best she could. The straggling brightness had been eclipsed by thicker cloud and Ennor took to humming to keep her mind from wandering further than each new step she stamped in the snow. She stamped over fear and its nibbling questions and was happy to be moving to keep the chatter at bay.

  The afternoon came and went and with its passing came the crossover of time and light that was twilight. Ennor stopped to make a cigarette and she scratched her head and reached inside her coat for the map Butch had given her.

  She crouched behind a disgorged stack of granite blocks and opened the map crossways from the wind and stroked it flat with the palms of her gloved hands, retracing her footsteps from the morning’s walk with her fingers. The realisation that she was a little lost dawned on her slowly; her mind had been settling on too many other things to pay attention to the basic detail of this way and that.

  Maybe she was enjoying herself more than she should have been. Perhaps Butch was right, she had not thought things through.

  Flints of wet snow were dashed by the increasing wind and Ennor resigned herself to the fact that she would have to take shelter until it passed. She replaced the map and dipped her head as she continued on her way, occasionally sharpening her eyes to the horizon in the hope that she might spy a familiar run of farm outbuildings in which to stop.

  Darkness came knocking and menacing shadows crept about the moor. The heavy snow built towers out of specks and arched in frozen waterfalls from skeletal trees.

  She twisted the cuffs of her coat round her fists and cursed the woollen gloves that scratched between her fingers and she narrowed her eyes to trace a faint outline of trail that led to the gash of a small quarry.

  The carefree attitude from earlier had now deserted her and she could feel the choke of tears tightening in her chest like a slow snapping rubber band. The quarry was an ink blot compared to the higher ground and she stumbled as she stepped down, fingering the rock for anything that might resemble a roof for shelter.

  Inside the belly of the quarry the void split open to reveal a mountain of thick granite slabs heaped together like fallen cards. Ennor took off her rucksack and stuffed the ridiculous frame into the largest hole.

  She lifted her collar to the wind and pulled at her hat until it rested against her eyebrows and wedged herself as far down into the dank crevice as she could without getting stuck.

  Ennor thought about the future and she punched out at the darkness in frustration, her fist hitting rock with a thud, and she let the pain warm her like something reassuring brought from home.

  The quarry and the moor were silent with the black of night and white of snow and she thought she might go crazy with her heavy breathing bundled into damp clothes and her heart beating out loud and threatening in her ears.

  She thought to look at her watch but didn’t want to know that it was maybe early teatime and she convinced herself that it was later to shorten the entombed sentence, lighting a cigarette to make good with doll’s house light and heat.

  She sucked the backwash dregs of tepid coffee through her teeth to make it last and she swished it and sniffed it and was reminded of Butch and his sweetness.

  When there was nothing left to smoke but the glowing ember of butt and the flask was tapped dry Ennor settled bony and crushed against the rucksack and sighed. She closed her eyes to the dark and painted her eyelids with a bright blue sky and a sun as warm as embers and she put people she loved into the mix with laughter and dance and everyone summer drunk.

  Her mother waltzed into her dream with her sanity intact and happiness for everyone was a given. A sure thing before the decline of little things unnoticed.

  Ennor danced with her mother while in her imagination Loretta was singing a whole lot of lovey-dovey; a little girl standing barefoot on her mother’s, singing and giggling with the stretch and awkwardness of things.

  The merry flight of fantasy soon turned shocking and unbearable and Ennor sat balled and cold and insignificant to the world, the past hanging like an old damp coat hooked to the back of a door, lifeless and rotten. She pressed her hands over her eyes and dug her fingers in close to popping, pinning what couldn’t be explained to the back of her mind to stop herself from crying.

  A reluctant dawn loped across the moor and tapped at the young girl’s shoulder until she woke and opened her eyes to the funnel of grey half-light that split the rock in two.

  She lifted her face to the gentle breeze and the salt smell of sea air indicated the wind was now coming from the south and she heard the double drip of melting snow outside.

  She stretched her legs as best she could and startled herself with a yawn that ripped her mouth wide with a wild howling echo, then she slid from the shelter and pulled at her rucksack until it dislodged from a snag in the rock and she stood to slap the dirt from her clothes.

  Sun
light was sudden and bright through a hundred layers of cloud and the quarry rocks moved with shifting snow. The landscape changed around her and Ennor sat on a corner of rock and pulled the rucksack between her legs and she untied the tin mug from the tubular frame and went and held it beneath a run of melting snow.

  When the mug was inch-full she swallowed it down and refilled it and splashed the iced water over her face. She took off her hat and wetted her hair into some kind of tidy, itching at the rib-lines on her forehead with relief.

  Her empty stomach turned somersaults and she tried not to think about the last of the potato cakes. Saving them would stave off a ‘no food’ panic so she could think about other things.

  Even so, the flat fried potato nested in her mind and she thought she could smell them as she tied the mug to the frame of the rucksack. She told herself no and, when her stomach wouldn’t listen, she shouted it and waited for the quarry to echo its agreement, realising that in that snow hole she would be waiting a long time.

  She did star jumps to warm up and jiggled the stiff from her legs until her knees no longer snapped with the cold, then crouched to wiggle the rucksack on to her back.

  Outside the quarry Ennor sensed the creeping, coming daylight and she loosened her scarf and folded her hat back into a wide turn on the crown of her head in anticipation.

  Today was the first proper day of her adventure and she was determined to forget last night and make good progress. She would get to her great-aunt’s in a matter of hours and tomorrow she might even end the day standing at Mum’s door.